Making Better Biofuel May Be Easier Than Building Greener Engines

Biofuels could become more useful now that we're figuring out how to use them in our existing engines.

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Biofuels are a promising alternative to our limited supplies of petroleum, but fuel distilled from plants usually needs special engines to burn it. Now, scientists in Germany have figured out how to create a version that could run today's engines.

The fuel comes from the oils in rapeseed plants. On its own, it burns too hot to run in traditional diesel engines. So researchers used ethylene gas to break the oil's long carbon chains into shorter ones.